


These Quiet Places

by feverpitchfiasco



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Schmoop, Trust, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 17:17:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2476124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverpitchfiasco/pseuds/feverpitchfiasco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny isn't always so loud and intense. Sometimes he and Steve just enjoy the quiet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Quiet Places

**Author's Note:**

> Look at that, my very first McDanno fic! Hopefully there'll be more to come. 
> 
> I'll be honest about this one, though. No clue where it came from. I wrote it in the middle of the night.

Danny can fill a room when he wants to. He can press up against your every sense and leave you eager for more barbed tongue and dashed hand movements. But Danny stops sometimes. When they’re alone. When it’s just him and Steve, he softens and deflates down to a normal size and eases up on the whirlwind he surrounds himself with. His words flow a little gentler, his hands arc gracefully as they shed the pointed motions of his agitation. He melts into his chair, loosens the knot on his tie and lets his eyelids fall heavy with a smile on his face. The first time Steve notices, it leaves his chest aching and his mind racing.

It takes Steve a lot longer to notice than he’d like to admit that it’s because Danny trusts him. Danny trusts Steve to see all of his raw, exposed nerves and not poke them. It’s in these moments that the Jersey made armor gets put away and he trusts Steve with whispered secrets and old heartaches. Moments like these where Steve learns that the first woman to break Danny’s heart was named Anne. That it was 10th grade and her kisses tasted like cherry cola and bubblegum. That she decided Danny wasn’t worth as much as the star quarterback and he got dumped beneath the bleachers. Steve learns that Danny hasn’t tasted cherry cola since then. 

Steve learns that Grace almost died as a baby, an infection raging through her tiny body that she was barely able to fight but _we’re stubborn ones, us Williamses_ and she pulled through. Steve learns that that was the catalyst of his and Rachel’s divorce. Steve learns that he hates the bitterness in Danny’s eyes when he says that _it’s really kind of heartbreaking to shop for a christening gown and a baby coffin at the same time because you’re just not sure what’s going to happen._

Steve learns that despite the divorce leaving them in much better places, Danny and Rachel are constantly circling each other in some unfinished business kind of way. That Danny will always love her, love his memories of her, but also loves the man he is without her. That they don’t belong together, but he can’t regret their time because it resulted in Grace. 

Danny learns that Steve holds these moments dear. When he opens up and trusts Steve, time after time. Trusts him with these vulnerable moments, with these bits of him that he’s long since put on a shelf to never be examined again. Steve opens the rusty hinges of his own ribcage and allows Danny to see the messy pulp inside. The quivering remains of a heart too big for a little boy faced with too much tragedy. He tells Danny about hearing the doorbell ring one day, peeking at the cruiser in the driveway and knowing that his life would never be the same. He tells him of whispered conversations with Mary in the dead of night about how they’ll always have each other. He also tells him how it felt to board separate planes to separates lives. How he couldn’t deal with being so alone and isolated so he embraced it. How he got a dark thrill of satisfaction up his spine at Annapolis because he was being taught how to compartmentalize his heart and soul. To slice himself up and keep the chunks in different sized Tupperware containers. He could cut out all the messy, broken pieces of himself and shove them in a dark corner. How he learned to rely on his intelligence, his quick-wit, his flourishing leadership skills to excel in everything he did. Steve tells Danny that he never forgot the softer pieces of himself, locked away from the rest of him. That they were never fully out of sight, out of mind. Steve tells Danny that he was terrified to ever open them again, because they’d sat rotting in their airtight containers for so long. Why deal with that mess?

It’s in these quiet moments where they finally find the peace and quiet they need to just… stop… moving. To take the time to just examine themselves, to examine each other and to see how their secrets align. In the pleasant warmth of a Hawaiian sunset, Steve finds that maybe his softer parts, the ones he’s been so terrified to look at, maybe aren’t so far gone as he’d feared. That maybe Danny won’t mind seeing them, despite being forgotten for so long. He’s a little past pull date, but Danny doesn’t seem to care. Steve’s heart beats frantically against his bleached and chipped ribs as Danny carefully, so carefully, peels the lid off of each and every forgotten container of Steve and finds only happiness and joy. 

Danny hangs his blustery, toughened armor in his closet. Only pulls it out when he really needs it. He never needs it very often these days. Even when Steve stumbles in his attempts at human socialization, when he says the wrong thing, does the wrong thing, every time the knife edge of Steve presses against him. He never ends up with more than the barest of scratches. Never ends up with the hilt-deep gutting he used to expect. No. Danny leaves his armor carefully tucked away these days. He doesn’t need the noise and wind and static he once shielded himself with. Not when it’s just Steve.

He has a crazy ninja super-SEAL to help keep him safe. And Steve has a glorious blond tornado from New Jersey to make sure that all of the important pieces of his heart and soul see the light of day. 

Steve learns that Danny’s kisses taste like too many cups of coffee and stale malasadas. He learns that Danny leans forward, stretches up into his kisses to negate the height difference. That he mutters about giraffes and ladders as his lips pull into a smile against Steve’s own. As he wraps his arms tightly around Danny’s waist, he learns that despite Danny’s claims otherwise, maybe he’s found his home again.


End file.
